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Thursday, July 21, 2016

Why do marketers and brand ambassadors try so hard in social media to get “fake internet points” or “15 seconds of fame”. The fame and value is fleeting unless we hit the holy grail of vitality, buzz-worthy, blanket worldwide free-keting.

One way to go viral is to ride a viral trend — today the trend is Pokemon Go. Here are some clever ideas around the world used to monetize Pokemon Go. For the first time, the glued-to-phones millennials are going outdoors, and the stay-at-home glued-to-computers gaming crowd and scavenger hunting the city. It is a prime time for small businesses to get noticed.

All the tool you need is a smart phone and a clever idea.

A clever idea can stick, make people laugh and remember your business. Your loyal patrons will now know that you care about their hobbies. If you think these are penniless jobless gamers, you are wrong. While a popular mobile game title can gross about $3 million dollar a month, Pokemon Go players logged about $3 million dollars a day for the franchise during lauch. They will be hungry and thirsty after chasing Pokemons for kilometers. It really takes a lot of effort to hatch a lousy egg.Final price bill discount based on player levels. Example, level 3 free soda, level 5 free slice. Carefully, level 20 is no longer hard to obtain. Example 2, give an incremental discount of 10 cents per level.

Pokemon Go merchandise. Nothing can erase the image of a magikarp mask on a 6 pack jacked body. Cannot be unseen. Currently, you cannot order the Pokemon Go wearable device, so people are charging a premium for guaranteed pre-orders.

Market your location if you spotted a rare Pokemon. Players will go far and abandon their cars for a monster (as seen in the central park example).

Upgrade your kid’s lemon stand. A smart kid has been selling blue Doritos, red Doritos and yellow Lay’s, as well as lemonades served from colored bottles to play into the Pokemon team rivalry. Remember, these trainers are out there for cute monsters. Your kids can totally be sweet and melt many hearts. That lemons stand will win as long as it is near a Pokestop.

Encourage your employees and your employer to set up lures. Lures especially in a Bermuda triangle or a lagoon of concentrated Pokestops means heavy heavy foot traffic. “Location location location!” This game just turned your street into a hot spot. Set up lures by spending dollars in the app store means 10x return in revenue and tips!

A black board stand outside your bar that reads “Something clever about Pokemon that I don’t know. I am too old. Come in and get drunk”. Yes, we are adults and we play because it is a part of our sentimental emotional childhood. Just like Totoro. We may be 20 years behind the Japanese anime industry, but the US is the first place they chose to launch the game way before Japan. We are the jackpot.

Offer your restuarant / coffee shop as a place for the trainers to “charge up, cool off and catch ’em all”. It’s a hot summer out here. Iced cold drinks are great baits.

User testing bait using lures. The Down to Lunch mobile app team set up a lure on UC Berkeley campus to get users to try their app and give feedback. Startup hustle prime example.

Create a new meme worthy Pokemon Go banner. Schrödinger’s Pokeball: When the app freezes the Pokemon is both caught and not caught.

Youtube videos on top 10’s, cheats, history of Pokemon. Popular Youtube channels have been cranking out top 10 videos: cutest, most useless, unexpected, weirdest pokemon. Cheats, tips, even Forbes came up with an article 10 things I wish I knew before hand. Tips and cheatsheets have surfaced on Imgur and Quora.

Poking fun at Pokemon Go in your comic strip, graphic novel. Redoing the launching screen concept art, making fun of a enormous amount of zubats infesting the cit, poking fun of an useless magikarp can run away. Of course, the server crashes.

A zoo updated the profile of each zoo animal using Pokemon Go characters card UI and design. They know how to connect with their young animal-loving patrons.

Be nice to your new visitors if your house happens to be close to a Pokestop or a gym. You do not want internet mob to internet shame or reality storm you.Drafting a related Pokemon to gain publicity. A coffee shop uses a sheep Pokemon to market its sheep milk latte. Of course, copyright issues may occur.

(Not marketing but worth mentioning monetizing methods

Purchasing Nintendo stocks. It has fluctuated 10% up and down within a week.

Create a new mobile game. The game grosses $3 million dollar a day in the Apple App Store. Apple customers are known to spend more. Clearly mobile game is going strong.

Code a new website and API for Pokemon Go sightings. Flex that programmer muscle and get some Github stars and forks. Example: Pokemon Go Map

Copying the Pokemon Go game mechanics. Without a doubt, players think Pokemon Go has assembled known game mechanics into a whole new game play. Venture capitalists have already been pitched all kinds of Pokemon Go copycat games. Why not? Augmented Reality gaming just started. And apparently it doesn’t cost $3000 dollars for a headset.

Nintendo reported earnings for the period before Pokemon Go. Its net loss is quite larger than analysts projected. Nintendo is going from "Pokemon Go to Pokemon No". Probably not a good time to buy its shares.

The Pokemon wearable would have affected the Nintendo bottomline, but it is delayed to at least September.

Updated August 1 2016: new strategy - hatch eggs to get rare Pokemon not wasting money on lures or modules. Use lucky eggs for better bag management and level up quickly and efficiently.

It may be true that one fan has Gotta Catch 'Em All! And supposedly he has won a big prize as a result. source article

With Pokevision down and Pokemon Go native tracker malfunctioning and buggy, players have resorted to searching for "pokemon tracker" apps in Apple app stores and Google play store. Some apps such as PokeDetector on Android even promises Android watch notifications. Be care of spams, fees, charges. Any unauthorized use of the game's copyrighted information will likely be shutting down soon. Here's a video demo of the app

The end of July update has left the Pokemon tracker broken still, and some players very confused. The new app is a blank slate, upon launching the app, users may be accidentally logging in using another gmail account (already active on their cell phone, likely their primary gmail account) and may not be the google gmail account they have been using to play the game. Select the correct Gmail from the top right dropdown menu and you will resolve this Pokemon Go resets user level to 0 requires new account set up update problem. It's not really a problem, but it's not a great User Experience (UX) as it confused many, include a few of my friends.

Did you know that the Hitmonlee fighting Pokemon may be named after Bruce Lee and Hitmonchan likely named after Jackie Chan? These are two Pokemons named after celebrities in the USA.

There's a shortcut to the Pokemon menu. Tap hold the menu button swipe up to access Shop, hold and swipe left for your Pokemons and hold swipe right for your items. Can come handy when there are lots of Pokemons to catch.

There are easter eggs in the game. If you name your Eevee after the original owners Rainer, Pyro and Sparky it is guaranteed that you can evolve the Eevee into Vaporeon, Flareon and Jolteon respectively.

Lures and incense spawns many additional Pokemons for your personalized experience. The actual system spawning isn't numerous everywhere. In fact, it can be sparse.

Pokevision.com is a website that displays real time real life system spawning of all Pokemons. Searchable world wide. Each Pokemon has a timer, and you will indeed find the Pokemons at the exact location.

It is finally released in Japan but it is yet to go live in many countries. In fact, the native birth country of Pokemon is not the first chosen place of the game. United States is the first country to play Pokemon Go!

Pokemon Go Plus wearable will be released later on. It will pair with your phone to help you catch pokemons without looking.

It's not that hard to find Pikachu near downtown area. Collecting them will get you special medals

Pokemon Go is not released in China yet

Nintendo stock saw a 10% jump and then subsided 2-3% in the first week following the game going viral

Other Augmented Reality companies like Google and Facebook are also on the rise

Niantic is the game studio, created Pokemon Go in collaborations with Pokemon International a private company that Nintendo owns a stake in and in turn owns a revenue share in Niantic's game

Niantic also created the AR game ingress but didn't receive much attention especially compared to PG.

Some areas in downtown will attract rarer pokemons on a daily basis

In order to play Pokemon GO your phone must have access to internet and the GPS enabled

Some people found that traveling via a car is too fast and will be prevented from getting points, but cars in heavy traffic will do, biking, rollerblading ... but remember in almost all places using a phone while transporting is illegal and dangerous

We know some of the mythical creatures exist because people have been stationing them at gyms to show off

Different cities, districts offer different pokemons. For example, San Francisco Ferry Building has a lot of water pokemons such as Magikarp, Tentacool, tentacruel, psyduck and squirturl, which are hard to catch inland.